It's hard to believe, but the cryptocurrency industry has over 10,000 active tokens in circulation today. And along with the giants of the digital economy like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL), there are so-called meme coins.
Meme tokens are based on popular internet memes. The very first meme token appeared in 2013 based on the Luckycoin project, one of the many forks of the world famous Bitcoin. Its name is Dogecoin (DOGE). Its developers, programmers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, have repeatedly admitted in interviews that they originally created this cryptocurrency as a joke, as a parody of Bitcoin, and were extremely surprised by the huge popularity of the project. The creators used the famous Shiba Inu meme as a source of inspiration. To date, there are more than 12 billion tokens in circulation, which makes Dogecoin a real deal. According to the industry, cryptocurrency:
"It's one of the most volatile assets you can make a bet on, but people right now have a lot of reasons to make that bet, and that is being reflected in the market." – said Billy Markus.
What is the uniqueness of meme currency?
The popularity of meme coins directly depends on the hype created around it. In fact, it is not very difficult to create your own token, every user, who has some experience with crypto, can do it. But successfully promoting it into circulation and managing to start making profit is much more difficult. Even Dogecoin didn't succeed at the beginning - nobody needed it, and the price was about 1 cent. It gained its incredible popularity in the global community only after Elon Musk's tweets in early March 2021.
Pros and cons of meme coins
There is a mixed opinion about the phenomenon of meme tokens among crypto-influencers. On the one hand, these assets have a number of advantages, including:
- low cost;
- high scalability;
- high speed of transactions;
- attractiveness for new inexperienced investors due to recognizable images that attract attention.
But on the other hand, there are also significant drawbacks that prevent meme coins from being considered full participants in the crypto market. Among them:
- extremely high volatility;
- low ability to make crypto forecasts for meme coins due to the instability of market sentiment;
- the impossibility of buying meme tokens on the main crypto-exchanges (Binance, for instance, gives access only to DOGE and SHIB);
- unreliability from the point of view of experienced investors;
- danger of running into fraud meme coins.
5 popular meme tokens in 2022
Dogecoin (DOGE). This token is on the first place on the top memes tokens by market capitalization. The main advantage of the crypto is the unlimited emission, which means that you can mine Dogecoin indefinitely.
Shiba Inu (SHIB). The main competitor of Dogecoin in the cryptocurrency market. The token is created on the Etherium (ERC-20) blockchain and, unlike Dogecoin, has a limited supply. In 2021, it attracted public attention and overtook Bitcoin and Etherium in the number of searches on Google. Crypto analysts predict a great future for it, as it is no longer just a meme token, but a means of crypto exchange with a fully developed ecosystem including its own decentralized exchange, NFT and smart contracts based on Ethereum. You can read about SHIBs latest updates in this article.
Dogelon Mars (ELON). This “child” of Dogecoin and Tesla leader Elon Musk (the main fan of DOGE) appeared as a sign of support for scam victims on the cryptocurrency market. For 2022, ELON remains one of the most popular meme tokens and is actively traded on big crypto exchanges like Huobi, Gemini, Crypto.com.
Samoyed Coin (SAMO). Another meme token inspired by dogs. It has been working on the Solana blockchain since the beginning of 2021. It even outperformed SOL due to lower fees, faster transactions and greater scalability. The market capitalization of SAMO is $11,128,537 now.
Banano (BAN). This token was created on the Binance Smart Chain blockchain. This coin allows newcomers to the Crypto World to take their first steps in a new environment. It is used in ApeSwap NFT games. The average capitalization of BAN today is $114 million.
As you can see, there’re a lot of dog-themed tokens out there, we discussed them in this article. There’re also cat-tokens by the way.
The future of meme tokens in the modern crypto world
Meme tokens are a fairly risky crypto asset, as its price completely depends on public sentiment. It is almost impossible to predict their ups and downs – crypto trading techniques do not work here. Experts call meme tokens a prime example of a financial asset whose value increases only if its status among market participants rises. Usually, interest in meme tokens takes off when there is a stagnation in the environment of serious cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
A simple tweet or public statement of some celebrity can become a catalyst for the rise or fall of the meme token price. Therefore, it is equally easy to make a fortune on them even for a beginner crypto trader and lose everything in one moment the next morning.
